Though cycling is her summer pastime, Erin Sferrazza’s best memory of cycling involves snow, rain, and 30-degree temperatures.

Now a rising 19-year-old college sophomore, Sferrazza is a member of the Lees-McRae College varsity cycling squad, a Division 1 program in Banner Elk, N.C..

The frigid competition that she cherishes was her freshman trip to the USA Cycling Collegiate Mountain Biking nationals in Snowshoe, W.Va., late last October.

“We were all cheering for everyone,’’ said Sferrazza, “and my parents came down, too, which was cool.’’

This Easton teen is like many D1 athletes in that she affords school thanks to an athletic scholarship. But a cycling scholarship isn’t like most other mainstream sports grants in the country. Lees-McRae is one of a handful of colleges in the nation to offer them; indeed, every rider on the school’s team gets one.

Cycling at a collegiate level has completely changed the landscape for Sferrazza. In Massachusetts, she reigned in local contests.

Now, with the whole of the nation to outmatch, she’s pedaling uphill.

“In New England, there’d be five other women,’’ said Sferrazza. “At the collegiate level, there will be 30 women and it’ll be the best competition you will find.’’

Bicyclists begin at category 5 and work their way up to 1 through time and experience. Regardless of the difficulty incline, Sferrazza has stayed level in the rankings — first in dual slalom category 3, short track cross-country category 1, cross-country category 1, criterium category 4, road racing category 4, and among the top 15 in most of her competitions.

“She’s had a wealth of experience in such a short time,’’ said Mandy Gallagher, women’s assistant cycling coach at Lees-McRae. A steel frame and a set of rubber wheels have marked different stages of Sferrazza’s life for as long as she can remember.

“The Easter bunny got me a bike at 4 or 5,’’ she said.

Half a decade later, she and her family vacationed on Cape Cod. Her father, Mark, diagnosed with arthritis, rented a tandem bike for the two of them and they cycled all along the shore. They fell in love with it instantly.

For her 10th birthday, Sferrazza begged her parents for a tandem bike of her own, and from there, she and her father competed with it for about four years. The duo split up for the reason many rock bands do — conflicting personalities.

“I was getting too controlling back there,’’ said Sferrazza. “If you lean too much on a tandem bike, [it’ll] flip over.’’

But before the two-seater team went solo, the Sferrazzas experienced their greatest triumph. At a 2010 USA Cycling race in Keene, N.H., the duo rode together in the men’s 40-49 class. There was no tandem bike category, and it was considered a disadvantage, so they were grouped into her father’s age category.

“We climbed up the mountain, went down, and saw a biker in front of us,’’ said Sferrazza. “My dad said, ‘that’s third place . . . how bad do you want it?’ ’’

Very badly. She pedaled harder than she ever had before, she said, and they passed the guy to take third.

Throughout childhood and through high school, Sferrazza considered cycling a side passion. A three-sport athlete at Oliver Ames High School, she filled her seasons with athletics and training to keep up. Track and field was her forte, alongside lacrosse and cross-country.

She captained the cross-country team her junior and senior years, and thought she was on a clear path to track. She visited schools, spoke with coaches, and wrote letters, all with the intention of following track and field in college. It wasn’t until her mother suggested that she visit a tiny college in the South that her future shifted.

“I think I’ve always been a mountain girl at heart, stuck in the city,’’ said Sferrazza. On the college visit to Lees-McRae, surrounded by stone buildings, green fields, and rolling, verdant hills, she knew she had found her place and her calling.

The courses that the Lees-McRae cyclists use are carved out and tended to by students.

The campus is surrounded by trails that Sferrazza uses for her seven-days-a-week practices, a schedule well beyond her team two- or three-day requirements.

Though she owns bikes built for four biking concentrations, there’s one type of cycling that she values above the rest — mountain biking.

“I like how every trail is different,’’ said Sferrazza. “There’s always something harder.’’

Mountain biking is easier for Sferrazza because she can practice on the sprawling trails around Banner Elk. When she’s not training, she switches gears and uses her bike as her main ride for prescriptions, groceries, whatever she needs.

All of her time in the seat has come with a cost. For one thing, she noted, cycling is hard on the wallet, between replacing broken equipment and general upkeep.

The personal cost has also weighed on her. She biked all summer around Easton, leaving little time to see friends who, during eight months of the year, are hundreds of miles away. She manages better back at school, biking as dawn breaks while a GPS tracks her training for her coaches, and spending the rest of the day being a typical college student.

A nursing major, Sferrazza doesn’t plan to take advantage of the cycling minor offered by Lees-McRae. In fact, she’s never considered cycling as a profession.

When school days end, there will always be a hilly forest trail and a good bike, evidence that her summer pastime can last her a lifetime.

Katherine Fominykh can be reached at katherine.fominykh@globe.com.